The Past in the Present: Archaeology and Identity in a Historic African American Church

All across the world, people struggle daily to create and enhance their sense of identity. Such struggles are waged in many ways, including through the process of rediscovering and reinterpreting history. Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, an African American congregation in a suburb of Atlanta, is engaged in a search for its church cemetery, lost when the land was sold to the military during the nation’s mobilization for World War II. The church’s efforts are analyzed in the context of identity creation -- a search for links to a mythic and self-sufficient past. Archaeological methods reveal compelling evidence that the cemetery lies in a location previously unknown to the community. Through a collaborative process, the church community and the investigator identify the possible cemetery location and develop plans to institute reforms that are sustainable and agreeable to all parties

Multifractal analysis via scaling zeta functions and recursive structure of lattice strings

The multifractal structure underlying a self-similar measure stems directly from the weighted self-similar system (or weighted iterated function system) which is used to construct the measure. This follows much in the way that the dimension of a self-similar set, be it the Hausdorff, Minkowski, or similarity dimension, is determined by the scaling ratios of the corresponding self-similar system via Moran's theorem. The multifractal structure allows for our definition of scaling regularity and scaling zeta functions motivated by geometric zeta functions and, in particular, partition zeta functions. Some of the results of this paper consolidate and partially extend the results regarding a multifractal analysis for certain self-similar measures supported on compact subsets of a Euclidean space based on partition zeta functions. Specifically, scaling zeta functions generalize partition zeta functions when the choice of the family of partitions is given by the natural family of partitions determined by the self-similar system in question. Moreover, in certain cases, self-similar measures can be shown to exhibit lattice or nonlattice structure with respect to specified scaling regularity values. Additionally, in the context provided by generalized fractal strings viewed as measures, we define generalized self-similar strings, allowing for the examination of many of the results presented here in a specific overarching context and for a connection to the results regarding the corresponding complex dimensions as roots of Dirichlet polynomials. Furthermore, generalized lattice strings and recursive strings are defined and shown to be very closely related.Comment: 33 pages, no figures, in pres

Pharmacological activation of the nuclear receptor REV-ERB reverses cognitive deficits and reduces amyloid-β burden in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease currently lacks treatment options that effectively reverse the biological/anatomical pathology and cognitive deficits associated with the disease. Loss of function of the nuclear receptor REV-ERB is associated with reduced cognitive function in mouse models. The effect of enhanced REV-ERB activity on cognitive function has not been examined. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that enhanced REV-ERB function may enhance cognitive function in a model of Alzheimer’s disease. We utilized the REV-ERB agonist SR9009 to pharmacologically activate the activity of REV-ERB in the SAMP8 mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. SR9009 reversed cognitive dysfunction of an aged SAMP8 mouse in several behavioral assays including novel object recognition, T-maze foot shock avoidance, and lever press operant conditioning task assessments. SR9009 treatment reduced amyloid-β 1–40 and 1–42 levels in the cortex, which is consistent with improved cognitive function. Furthermore, SR9009 treatment led to increased hippocampal PSD-95, cortical synaptophysin expression and the number of synapses suggesting improvement in synaptic function. We conclude that REV-ERB is a potential target for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.</div

The Pine Needle, November 1949

Libraries and archives collect materials from different cultures and time periods to preserve and make available the historical record. As a result, materials such as those presented here may reflect sexist, misogynistic, abusive, racist, or discriminatory attitudes or actions that some may find disturbing, harmful, or difficult to view. Both a humor and literary magazine, The Pine Needle was a University of Maine student-produced periodical that began publication in the fall of 1946, the first post-World War II semester that saw GIs returning to campus. The Needle reflected an edginess and rebellion not found in previous UMaine student publications. While past student publications relied on euphemisms for alcohol and dating on campus, The Needle openly promoted the sexualization of co-eds and the use of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol by students who experienced war. Cover art for this issue is a pen-and-ink illustration by Len Keenan depicting a first year student wearing a freshman cap and bow tie, smoking a pipe that appears to be making him ill. Leonard F. Keenan (1929-1984), graduated from the University of Maine in 1951 with a B.S. in Forestry. He later earned his MBA from the Army Comptrollership School at Syracuse University and served as a civilian in the Army Budget Office. Though his career with the Army hit a snag in 1976, when he was among four men receiving formal, written reprimands for ...failing to detect and present accounting [failures] that lead to massive overspending... at the end of the Vietnam War, Keenan was honored following his death by the establishment of the Leonard F. Keenan Memorial Award at Syracuse University. The award continues to be presented annually to the U.S. Department of Defense\u27s outstanding financial manager. Keenan died in Virginia on April 30, 1984 from congestive heart failure

Five-year follow-up of intracoronary autologous cell therapy in acute myocardial infarction: the REGENERATE-AMI trial

Aims: The long-term outcomes of the intracoronary delivery of autologous bone marrow-derived cells (BMCs) after acute myocardial infarction are not well established. Following the promising 1 year results of the REGENERATE-AMI trial (despite it not achieving its primary endpoint), this paper presents the analysis of the 5 year clinical outcomes of these acute myocardial infarction patients who were treated with an early intracoronary autologous BMC infusion or placebo. Methods and results: A 5 year follow-up of major adverse cardiac events (defined as the composite of all-cause death, recurrent myocardial infarction, and all coronary revascularization) and of rehospitalization for heart failure was completed in 85 patients (BMC n = 46 and placebo n = 39). The incidence of major adverse cardiac events was similar between the BMC-treated patients and the placebo group (26.1% vs. 18.0%, P = 0.41). There were no cases of cardiac death in either group, but an increase in non-cardiac death was seen in the BMC group (6.5% vs. 0%, P = 0.11). The rates of recurrent myocardial infarction and repeat revascularization were similar between the two groups. There were no cases of rehospitalization for heart failure in either group. Conclusion: This 5 year follow-up analysis of the REGENERATE-AMI trial did not show an improvement in clinical outcomes for patients treated with cell therapy. This contrasts with the 1 year results which showed improvements in the surrogate outcome measures of ejection fraction and myocardial salvage index

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Epigenetic patterns in blood associated with lipid traits predict incident coronary heart disease events and are enriched for results from genome-wide association studies

Background- Genome-wide association studies have identified loci influencing circulating lipid concentrations in humans; further information on novel contributing genes, pathways, and biology may be gained through studies of epigenetic modifications. Methods and Results- To identify epigenetic changes associated with lipid concentrations, we assayed genome-wide DNA methylation at cytosine-guanine dinucleotides (CpGs) in whole blood from 2306 individuals from 2 population-based cohorts, with replication of findings in 2025 additional individuals. We identified 193 CpGs associated with lipid levels in the discovery stage (P &lt; 1.08E-07) and replicated 33 (at Bonferroni-corrected P &lt; 0.05), including 25 novel CpGs not previously associated with lipids. Genes at lipid-associated CpGs were enriched in lipid and amino acid metabolism processes. A differentially methylated locus associated with triglyceridesand high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL- C; cg27243685; P= 8.1E-26 and 9.3E-19) was associated with cis-expression of a reverse cholesterol transporter (ABCG1; P= 7.2E-28) and incident cardiovascular disease events (hazard ratio per SD increment, 1.38; 95% confidence interval, 1.15-1.66; P= 0.0007). We found significant cis-methylation quantitative trait loci at 64% of the 193 CpGs with an enrichment of signals from genome-wide association studies of lipid levels (P-TC = 0.004, PHDL-C = 0.008 and P-triglycerides = 0.00003) and coronary heart disease ( P= 0.0007). For example, genome-wide significant variants associated with low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and coronary heart disease at APOB were cis-methylation quantitative trait loci for a low-density lipoprotein cholesterol-related differentially methylated locus. Conclusions-We report novel associations of DNA methylation with lipid levels, describe epigenetic mechanisms related to previous genome-wide association studies discoveries, and provide evidence implicating epigenetic regulation of reverse cholesterol transport in blood in relation to occurrence of cardiovascular disease events